Profits Over Planet with Dr. Chad Nelson

[00:00:38] Tyler: [00:01:00] Hello and welcome to the swell season surf podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Brewer. On Monday, September 23rd, 2024, Surfrider Foundation announced a landmark lawsuit against Exxon, the world's largest producer of single use plastic polymers, that alleges decades of concealing the truth about the feasibility of plastic recycling and downplaying the risk of pollution from their products, causing immense harm to our environment, our ocean, and to human health.

[00:01:49] Tyler: This lawsuit aims to hold the fossil fuel giant accountable for its roles in instigating and intensifying the plastic pollution [00:02:00] crisis. The legal challenge asserts that Exxon falsely promoted to consumers through marketing and brand messaging, that their products were recyclable, exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis.

[00:02:14] Tyler: Even with recycling programs in place in the U. S. Less than 5 percent of our plastic is actually recycled into another plastic product. Despite these products being labeled as recyclable, the complaint alleges Exxon chooses to their max, chooses to maximize their profits while poisoning our planet with plastic pollution and hides the truth about it.

[00:02:39] Tyler: A coalition of leading environmental organizations comprised of the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, the Sierra Club, and San Francisco Baykeeper are joining forces to take a stand. It's a landmark case that will no doubt have a major impact on how we hold big companies responsible for the [00:03:00] pollution they cause.

[00:03:01] Tyler: My guest on this episode is Dr. Chad Nelson, the chief executive officer of the Surfrider Foundation. He is here to discuss this initiative and other programs by the Surfrider Foundation. And for those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Chad Nelson, he leads the world's largest grassroots network.

[00:03:22] Tyler: Dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through approaches that integrate coastal recreation with conservation. Chad grew up on the beaches of Laguna Beach surfing, fishing, and lifeguarding. He has earned a doctorate degree from the UCLA, a Master of Environmental Management degree from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Brown University.

[00:03:51] Tyler: Through his research, he helped establish the field of surfenomics, the study of the economic value of surfing. And he, Dr. [00:04:00] Chad Nelson, is our guest on this episode of the Swell Season Surf Podcast. Welcome to the show, Dr. Chad. Hey. You okay with me calling you Dr. Chad? You can just call me Chad. Okay. Dr.

[00:04:09] Tyler: Chad.

[00:04:09] chad: Whatever

[00:04:10] Tyler: you want. It's all good. Sounds fun. To be like, Dr.

[00:04:13] chad: Chad.

[00:04:15] Tyler: Well, thanks, Tyler. I'm happy to be here. Super psyched to have you here. You're here for Environmental Week, which is part of the U. N. Uh, can you just kind of give a brief overview of why you guys are here? And what's the point of, of the surfrider visit to New York?

[00:04:30] chad: Yeah, um, so this is New York Climate Week. Yes. And it, um, it, it, it's, you know, attached, not related, but connected to, um, you know, the U. N. 's, uh,

[00:04:41] Tyler: Security Council meeting or whatever. Big meeting, yeah. And so, um,

[00:04:44] chad: You know, I think it's grown organically over time to become this sort of epicenter of climate thinking in the U.

[00:04:51] chad: S. And, uh, you know, some people from all over the world are here, uh, talking about, you know, A whole range of [00:05:00] issues related to climate change, right? Because this is a big, big issue that we're facing. So there's people here trying to like finance carbon credits and figure out how to reduce emissions. You know, there's all kinds of stuff happening out there.

[00:05:13] chad: Interestingly enough, not enough people, I don't think, are talking about the ocean.

[00:05:17] Tyler: No.

[00:05:17] chad: So there's a small group of people here talking about the ocean. I actually bumped into the woman who runs the Ocean Conservancy at Coffee this morning. Nice. Um, And, uh, yeah, so it's just we're, we're here at surf writers here, you know, to try to, um, make sure the ocean's part of the conversation.

[00:05:34] chad: Uh, you know, we're, we're doing a couple events on, uh, Friday and Saturday. Nice.

[00:05:39] Tyler: Um, and No doubt this, uh, lawsuit was really good timing for you guys to make a splash this week, I guess. That's right. Yeah. So you're going to be the prettiest person in the room over the next week. Everyone's going to be wanting to talk to you.

[00:05:54] chad: Everyone except the folks at Exxon. Of course. Of

[00:05:56] Tyler: course. Well, they may want to talk to you, but you may need to watch [00:06:00]out. They may shank you as well. I need some security.

[00:06:02] chad: You

[00:06:02] Tyler: might end up like that lawyer who challenged, uh, challenged him in Ecuador, right? Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. So Let's start unpacking this lawsuit.

[00:06:12] Tyler: I guess. Um, so the state of California reports at the, at that annually an estimated 12. 1 million tons of plastic waste becomes aquatic pollution and 19. 8 million tons pollute the land. And meanwhile, Surfrider has found that. 85 percent of the trash collected in their California beach cleanups in 2023 were single use plastic.

[00:06:35] Tyler: Yep. So walk us through this lawsuit and what, how it came about and what it really is about.

[00:06:42] chad: Yeah. I mean, if we wind it all the way back. Yeah. So if you were a surfer in the 1950s and 60s, which, you know, obviously a glorious time. Yes. Not crowded, but, uh, or less crowded. Less crowded. There was. Really no plastic in the ocean.

[00:06:58] chad: Yeah, like zero, you know, this [00:07:00] is a product that basically came out of World War two. Mm hmm and and so, you know in 50 70 years We've gone from like a plastic free ocean to an ocean that you know a planet and an ocean that's full of plastic Right. So this is a New problem relatively. Yeah, and we made a mess of things really quickly

[00:07:21] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:07:21] chad: and the reason we did that, you know, and there's this kind of famous life magazine article from the 60s That's like, you know, uh a life of convenience Throw away plastics gonna you know, you'll never have to do dishes again this idea that we can just like produce this Plastic that's disposable and get rid of it You know, that fundamental premise has come back to bite us.

[00:07:44] chad: Yeah. So the stuff's everywhere. You know, you can't go walk on the beach. No. Go out for a surf. And not see some plastic along the shore, right? It's all over the place. And, um, and so, you know, we've been doing beach cleanups for decades. Mm [00:08:00] hmm. And in the beginning, I think the thought was, Hey, people on the beach are littering.

[00:08:05] chad: Mm hmm. We're gonna pick up their plastic so it doesn't end up in the ocean. Right. You know, it's like cleaning up a local park. Of course, yeah. And so it was just a way of, like, being a good, Uh, you know, if you if you live at the beach, you're lucky enough to live at the beach. You should probably take care of it.

[00:08:22] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:08:22] chad: And um, and so we probably about five or six years ago started collecting data on what we're picking up at the beach. So we have this, you know, you can go on our website and like see real time. Yeah, what we're finding. We're categorizing it. And so that stat you read is, you know, yeah. Most of it is bags, wrappers, bottle caps, bottles, straws, foam, all the single use crap.

[00:08:47] chad: And, um, and so, and if you think about like, think about buying a bag of chips. Mm hmm. You buy that bag of chips, it, uh, you know, the bag itself costs Frito Lay, whoever's making it, a penny. [00:09:00] Yeah. And you eat the six chips that are in that bag, mostly air. And, uh, Yep. They are inflated with air. Yeah. And. And then that bag becomes your problem or our problem, you know, um, for the rest of its life.

[00:09:16] chad: So the, the chip company and the producers made something super cheap, disposable. Then you got to throw it away, recycle it. Well, we can talk about what that is or, and then you're paying for your trash collection. Then it goes to some landfill. That's like. Society's problem or it's in one of those trash cans at the beach and you're paying some guy to come by from your town To pick those cans up.

[00:09:38] chad: Yeah, or seagull grabs it and the next thing you know, it's in the ocean and becomes a hazard Right, and so this this cycle of cheap single use plastic disposable plastic that too much of Escapes the solid waste system, which is imperfect in its own right remember a decade ago. There were stories of barges off, New York

[00:09:58] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:09:59] chad: you know that was like

[00:09:59] Tyler: [00:10:00] where we take this stuff.

[00:10:01] Tyler: I mean Staten Island stopped taking it You know now they got some really fun sleigh riding hills in the winter. The only problems we have no snow. Yeah

[00:10:08] chad: And and so You know our approach to so we we don't want that plastic in the ocean. It's killing marine mammals It's impacting fish. There's a you know, uh marine biologist.

[00:10:26] chad: You can see he's like a marine biologist that studies plankton Yeah, he does these amazing videos where you can see the plankton eating the microfibers of plastic It's going up the food chain. It's killing birds. It's in us. Yeah. Right. So every study that comes out, it's in our lungs. It's in our brains.

[00:10:42] chad: It's in our brains. It's in our blood. It's in our testicles. Like, and stuff's not good. Yeah. It's toxic stuff. So, you know, we want to get it out of the ocean and get it out of ourselves. Yeah. Um, so a couple of approaches to do that. One is, um, We've passed like 300 laws and policies [00:11:00] to start to eliminate single use plastics, bags, foam, you know, you name it.

[00:11:05] chad: Straws. Straws, which everyone loves to vilify. Everyone loves to hate that. And it's funny because we, I think unquestionably have been responsible for passing more laws to get rid of plastic in the United States than anybody else. Wow. And straws are the gateway drug to plastics. And so the people We all know that straws are not significant.

[00:11:30] chad: Yeah. Other than that iconic video at the turtle. Yeah. Which was tragic. But as soon as you see the straws waste, it changes your perception about all the rest of the waste.

[00:11:41] Tyler: Mm-Hmm. .

[00:11:42] chad: And once you go get rid of straws in a town, it's the be, it's the snowball starts to roll off the hill.

[00:11:48] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:11:48] chad: And so, you know, I don't think anybody is naive to think that straw's gonna solve the problem.

[00:11:53] chad: But it's not a waste of energy. It was just the, it was the beginning of the, of the thing.

[00:11:59] Tyler: [00:12:00] To me it feels like, um, I think a lot of people seem to forget that You know, they think of it as this one huge, large problem, but like, if we remove straws, if we do these little bits, it all adds up. That's right. And it becomes less daunting of a task.

[00:12:18] Tyler: You know, you got to start somewhere.

[00:12:20] chad: And I have yet to see someone who's criticized the straw bans, who's actually been to a city council meeting to actually change something. Yeah. So it's, you know, armchair quarterbacking. So we, there's opportunity to pass laws to get rid of this stuff. Yeah. Um, that's one approach that this lawsuit is kind of taking a different tact, which is saying, and there's a lot of this happening in the world today.

[00:12:46] chad: Hey, Exxon. So the other thing is interesting is plastics of fossil fuel.

[00:12:49] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:12:50] chad: So, right. This is made from natural gas. Yeah. And. And so they're producing this stuff and selling it and virgin plastic is [00:13:00] too cheap. It's not the, the downstream costs that I talked about with the chip bag aren't built into the product.

[00:13:07] chad: So they're producing something and having, it's having all these downstream effects that they're not taking responsibility for. Yeah. Um, so they make a lot of money and we deal with the problem. Worse than that, they've known for decades that recycling wasn't the solution. You know, we were all duped. I mean, you know, I don't know how old you are.

[00:13:29] chad: I'm 54. I'm

[00:13:30] Tyler: 11 teen.

[00:13:31] chad: I, yeah, I grew up, uh, you know, I grew up with 45. Yeah. I grew up recycling, right? That was like, and I'm like, it's funny. I'll be at a cocktail party at Surfrider. I never, I don't know. People know I'm at Surfrider, so they'll come, I'm like the, like, Pope or something, they'll come up to me, they're like, I recycle.

[00:13:44] chad: I'm like, I'm like, hey, I'm not judging anyone. That was like me

[00:13:49] Tyler: when you came, we came in and I'm like, we got glass bottles of water here, not plastic. I know, I appreciate that.

[00:13:55] chad: And, um, so You know, the premise of this is [00:14:00] the, the, uh, you know, big plastic and big oil have been basically selling us this idea that recycling is the answer.

[00:14:09] chad: Yeah. And they've spent billions of dollars while, while we're recycling 5%. We used to send, we used to put that stuff in the recycling bin with my air quotes and we would ship it to China and basically sell it. And that was. Recycled. Yeah. And you know, there are horrifying videos of towns with mountains like Staten Island full of plastic and there's like people picking through it for the small amount that's reusable.

[00:14:40] chad: Uh, so it's always been a myth. Uh, we felt good about it. Yeah. And, uh, so we're finally like, all right, let's get the guys who are responsible for this at the very start of this process to have to pay. It's analogous to. Sort of what happened with tobacco. Exactly. So the goal here is for Exxon to take responsibility for [00:15:00] that downstream waste Pay for the decades of abuse and we can use that money To help us try to solve the problem.

[00:15:09] Tyler: Let me read, uh, what Exxon says here. Uh, just want to get your response. For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn't effective. A company statement read, They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills.

[00:15:31] Tyler: The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U. S. know. Advanced, uh, what they know, advanced recycling works. To date, we've processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into, uh, usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills. We're bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn't be recycled by traditional methods.

[00:15:57] Tyler: Your thoughts on that statement. There's so many things about [00:16:00] that statement. I feel like that statement could be used, potentially, as evidence. Actually, you know?

[00:16:07] chad: So, like, where do you even start? So, first of all, they're like, not us, blame the state. Yeah. So they're taking zero responsibility. Not surprising.

[00:16:15] chad: Right. Um, They have fought every single effort, you know, they're a big funder of, um, lobbyists who fight everything we do. Um, so, um, you know, they haven't been cooperative ever. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, Advanced recycling is the new myth. So what this is, is basically they use toxic chemicals to break down the plastic and turn it into other products.

[00:16:45] chad: Yeah. They can turn it into fuel. Mm hmm. Uh, that, uh, effort, it'll tie to the later conversation about Big C. Yeah. Is incredibly toxic. Mm hmm. Guess where they do that? Not in Laguna [00:17:00] Beach. No. Uh, they do that in sort of industrial areas that are impacting poor communities. Like Cancer Alley

[00:17:07] Tyler: in Louisiana.

[00:17:08] chad: And, um, and so there's a lot of, and it creates a tremendous amount of waste still.

[00:17:12] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:17:13] chad: So their new solution, uh, which is just the same old, they just rebranded recycling to recycling. Advanced recycling to make it sound better, but it's not.

[00:17:23] Tyler: I, I wonder, like, why hasn't the government tried to impose, like, taxes for, for plastic single use? Like, to me, that I guess it would be something that I would have thought they would have tried to have done.

[00:17:40] Tyler: Obviously, lobbyists would fight it, I'm sure. But like, I've not heard of them wanting to be like, Oh, these plastic bags that cost you a penny, now they cost you a buck. Yes. And I have yet to really see that, but I'm not sure. Maybe there have been efforts. And I was hoping you could speak to those different ways we can kind of go about this.

[00:17:58] chad: Yeah, you know, it's [00:18:00] interesting. So one of the The other thing is one of the things we started with was single use bags, right? Uh, that we carry our groceries home with, which you literally like pick up at the counter, walk to your car or however you get home. Yeah. Get to your kitchen and then you throw it away, right?

[00:18:15] chad: So that thing, you have that thing for like 10 minutes. Yeah. Maybe a half hour. Uh, and that lasts for thousands of years. Yeah. So, you know, it's just a bad designed product. Yeah. Um, so we started with those trying to get rid of those. That was like the, you know, first statewide bag man in California, 2014.

[00:18:30] chad: Um, And then, so we move to paper. Well, paper has its own impacts, right? But if you charge a nickel for the paper bag, the usage drops by 70%. So it's like this little economic incentive. Everyone can afford the nickel, but they don't want to pay it on principle Yeah, so this little tiny tax right for that paper bag and it was largely done because they're more [00:19:00] expensive

[00:19:00] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:19:00] chad: so it was sort of a nod to the grocers in one way saying hey, you're gonna have to use a more expensive product But you can charge for it.

[00:19:06] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:19:07] chad: and in fact you have to charge for it Yeah, but it has this even better effect, which it minimizes So it's just, it's just evidence that a little fee can make a big difference. Um, California passed a bill and we're working on this in New York called, it's called extended producer responsibility, which is a mouthful.

[00:19:26] chad: But basically if you break it out, it's extending, yeah, EPR, EPR that works. Extending the responsibility to the producer. Yeah. So it's like this lawsuit in a sense, which is, Hey, if you're going to produce plastic. You need to be responsible for the end life. California passed this bill and they're trying to figure out how to do it.

[00:19:48] chad: It's complex. And part of it is, uh, there's a recycled content mandates to get that from 5 percent to 25 to 50 to 75. If it can't [00:20:00] be recycled, they have to pay.

[00:20:01] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:20:01] chad: Into a fund to clean up the mess. So it's essentially a tax. Yeah. So if that chip bag costs them 25 cents instead of a penny, they probably.

[00:20:12] chad: Make a more efficient bag, put five chips in a giant bag, they think about how it's made and maybe use a different product. So there are efforts to essentially, it's not a straight up tax, but it's sort of trying to build the cost of the waste into the product, which will change behavior. It,

[00:20:33] Tyler: I find it interesting like how Exxon and all these plastic producers.

[00:20:40] Tyler: Want to put the onus on us, the consumer, as opposed to themselves. And like this shaming that seems to happen that with it, like, Oh, you guys should recycle. All our stuff is recycled or you could recycle. And like, they constantly promote this and like, and then it's on us to make that decision, which is [00:21:00] really difficult when there's not many other options out there for like, what chip bags are out there that aren't That's right.

[00:21:08] Tyler: You

[00:21:08] chad: know, plastic. You know, and you can try to minimize your personal plastic, somebody's plastic consumption. Yeah. We got a water bottle. Water bottle, glass. Yeah. Um, but I say this all the time. If you stand at the door of a supermarket and look at the totality of the products in there.

[00:21:28] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:21:29] chad: With the exception of like the meat and the, even the vegetables, a are wrapped in plastic.

[00:21:33] chad: Yeah. But like the whole place, every single product, probably thousands of them, right? Are. In plastic. And so it's, IM, it's like impossible to escape it. To escape it. And we need to make, if we, if we wanna get rid of this stuff, we need to like rebuild the system so that either those bags don't exist. Yeah.

[00:21:52] chad: Or the, that or they're actually recycled. Mm-Hmm. . Or we build a better plastic, which is also happening.

[00:21:59] Tyler: [00:22:00] Yeah.

[00:22:00] chad: So that it. Breaks down. Breaks down. Doesn't last a thousand years.

[00:22:03] Tyler: Yeah. Well, there, it's interesting, like, wasn't there, I think like a week or two ago, a study came out that found that, um, All of our food that's wrapped in plastic, there's like five, 50, 000 compounds in there and about 3, 000 of them get into our food that's wrapped in plastic.

[00:22:22] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:22:23] chad: I know, I mean, you know, everyone's drinking single use water bottles thinking that they're being healthier because the water's cleaner, which it's not. But now they're finding out that it's also cleaner. Full of all the chemicals, not too surprisingly, from the bottle, which is nasty stuff.

[00:22:41] Tyler: So, how, so you allege that, uh, Exxon has known about this for a while, so, I guess, like, it follows, like, their strategy that they've known about climate change also for a long time, like, what sort of documents that have been presented, how, what was the impetus for this lawsuit, [00:23:00] because I saw that it was the state that's, that initially, that Brought this lawsuit and now you've brought the second lawsuit basically.

[00:23:07] chad: Yeah, it's sort of they're running and they're separate but parallel. Yeah, you know, we'll see what happens. The court may merge them. Yeah, they're sort of they're they're They're making the same sort of complaint. Uh, you know, there's internal documents that suggest that they've, they've known about this for a long time, just like the climate stuff, you know, and then, you know, we've been sort of watching how they communicate.

[00:23:34] chad: And, you know, all the money they've spent to sort of sell us this myth about recycling.

[00:23:40] Tyler: There's one thing I think a lot of people are not aware of are the, the, uh, indicators or markers on plastic products that have the arrows and the numbers in which, you know, and how, what is most recycled bull and which isn't, you know, which is, Kind of crazy [00:24:00] when you think about this, like, because we have not been educated on that at all.

[00:24:03] chad: No, and it's complicated, right? There's that little, there's the little triangle, which we all know, and then there's a little number in there, right? 1, Um, and it, it describes the chemical, in some ways, it's just, you know, it's, is it polyethylene? Is it polypropylene? Like, the kind of plastic. Yeah. Um, the ones and twos.

[00:24:23] chad: Are pretty recyclable. None of the other ones are. And, uh, so we passed, we also passed a law in California a few years back called the Truth in Recycling Act. And it was basically an effort to say, hey, you, you can't put that number on there. It's theoretically recyclable, is what their argument would be.

[00:24:42] chad: But there isn't a facility that can recycle it. So, you know, in concept, It could be recycled, but in reality, it's not

[00:24:51] Tyler: so this lawsuit. What do you think? I guess. What do you think could happen if the outcome is that they [00:25:00] lose? What are we? What are we looking at seeing here? Do you think? I

[00:25:03] chad: think, like tobacco, two things.

[00:25:06] chad: One, they've got to be honest about what's going on, so no more deceptive practices. You know, it's similar to, hey, smoking's fine.

[00:25:12] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:25:13] chad: Um, so they, you know, they can't say, hey, recycling's the solution when it's not. So there's accountability for how they talk about the waste. You should

[00:25:19] Tyler: put a picture of like, uh, you know, like a turtle.

[00:25:23] Tyler: I mean, it's plastic straw come out of his nose or something on every product, like, like cigarettes head with like the lungs. Yeah, that's, that's right. Non recyclable. Yeah. You know, imagine if it said that. Yeah. It's

[00:25:34] chad: interesting. So, if you do an exercise, which is you get rid of your recycling bin.

[00:25:40] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:25:40] chad: Because it's essentially fake.

[00:25:43] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:25:43] chad: And throw all of your trash in your regular trash can. It like, if you try that, it feels kind of gross. It's awful. Yeah. It really does. I'm doing it at my house. I feel guilty. And so all of a sudden you're like, wow, I'm throwing away a lot of crap. And before you threw it in this bin and you were like, oh, that'll magically like disappear and everything will be fine.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] chad: So there's that honesty about what's going on. And then two is, um, we want them to like pay for the damages over the decades. How do you quantify

[00:26:10] Tyler: that?

[00:26:10] chad: Yeah. I mean that, that'll be probably a combination of economists and then a bunch of negotiation by lawyers. Yeah. But, um. But, you know, it could be in the order of billions of dollars and like tobacco, that money was used in tobacco's case to do research and, you know, Programming to educate people about the harms of smoking and campaign.

[00:26:33] chad: So like, for example, get kids to stop smoking, like the truth campaign. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah. It actually like significantly reduced the, uh, number of people who are smoking. So a little while, until

[00:26:45] Tyler: vaping came

[00:26:46] chad: along,

[00:26:48] Tyler: which is another thing.

[00:26:49] chad: But so if you do that with plastics, like, Hey, can we take that money, educate the consumer on what's really happening and really try to.

[00:26:57] chad: Solve this problem.

[00:26:58] Tyler: Yeah. And you [00:27:00] know, that money could be a boom for the surf industry in terms of sponsorship. Cause I remember those trust ads or the truth ads were great for the surf mags. At one point, we know the surf industry.

[00:27:12] chad: Needs new sources of revenue.

[00:27:14] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:27:19] Tyler: It, it, how is the process leading up to a case like this done in Surfrider? What, what, how long, how long has this been in, in process for? How do you decide, all right, this is what we're going to go for, or we're going to put our energy here. What does that process look like?

[00:27:39] chad: Yeah. Yeah. So. Surfrider, um, it's funny, we don't talk about it as much as we maybe should, but, um, we have a really powerful sort of legal arm at Surfrider.

[00:27:48] chad: Like right now we have 17 active lawsuits. Wow. Oftentimes, they are sort of in defense of some local project. So I'll give you an [00:28:00] example in Coos Bay, Oregon, Southern Oregon. Yeah. Um, there's a surf spot and a beach called Lighthouse Beach. Um, and homeowner came in, bought a piece of property. There was a path to the beach, closed the path and illegally.

[00:28:15] chad: Yeah. So our Coos Bay chapter. You know, calls up the headquarters, says what's happening, and our legal team starts to engage. We did the same thing kind of famously with Vinod Khosla, billionaire tech guy at Martins Beach in California, which is a big drama. Yeah. Ten years ago, we won there too. So oftentimes it's locally driven.

[00:28:35] chad: And we're trying to stop bad things from happening. Yeah. We sued U. S. Steel, they were polluting Lake Michigan, our Chicago chapter. Um, and so, that's usually the origin of it. This is a little different because we, we call this like more strategic. We're trying to solve a big problem, not just sort of like whack a mole with some local issue.

[00:28:53] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:28:54] chad: Um, so we have three lawyers on our team. Really good professional staff at Surfrider, [00:29:00] and we also have this amazing group called the Legal Issues Committee volunteer Lawyers from around the country some of the best ocean policy lawyers in the world Wow, you know Stanford Environmental Clinic lost law professors Really good folks that are like an advisory group.

[00:29:19] Tyler: Mm hmm.

[00:29:19] chad: And so Our staff will like sort of discern the case. Is it a good case? Does it make sense for us? Um, does it sort of achieve our mission goals? Uh, is it reasonable chance of winning? Yeah. Bring it to this legal issues committee. So it's like the advisory board, they review it. And then it gets to our board of directors at Surfrider and they vote on them.

[00:29:40] chad: Um, cause there's financial liability if we lose or we take on a case that is, uh, sort of frivolous. Uh, the other side can sue us back for wasting their time and money. So, there's a consequence to every lawsuit, you know, so we want to go into these things. Being smart, being thoughtful, uh, and recognizing the [00:30:00] risk.

[00:30:00] chad: So, there, we're pretty calculated about it. This is, this lawsuit was years in the making. Yeah. So we're doing the research, working with the coalition partners, you know, trying to determine How when

[00:30:13] Tyler: and where to do it sounds like a lot of cogs in the wheel in some ways And yeah, I don't envy your job of having to get a consensus

[00:30:23] chad: Yeah, I mean internally at surf rider, you know, there's we now have 80 people on the team So it's getting to be a pretty big organization You know, half of those people are out in the field around the country, and then half are, a bunch of the others are, you know, science, legal, and policy experts, marketing people and, you know, storytelling, guys like Trey.

[00:30:48] chad: And uh, internally, we, we work together really well, you know, um, so that part's not that hard. You know, we have vast chapter network. They're generally pretty in alignment with what we [00:31:00] do, but you know, there's thousands of people out there, but there's a lot of people who don't agree with us, and that's okay.

[00:31:05] chad: It's okay.

[00:31:05] Tyler: Yeah. Well, I mean, that, that, that happened. It's going to happen, you know, but it's, it's interesting. Like just, I can't imagine like, like this lawsuit and the mechanisms and that process progress is like pretty massive and huge. Sounds like a huge undertaking.

[00:31:22] chad: Yes. You know, it is, it is, uh, complex, you know, and big and important.

[00:31:28] chad: And, you know, so, uh, It's nice to hear you say that because I think a lot of people are like, Oh, what do they do, you know, and, uh, why do they need my membership or, you know, where's this money go? And this is exactly what it goes towards.

[00:31:41] Tyler: Well, that's the thing. Like, I think a lot of people don't see that and they think, Oh, that money goes to like testing our local waters and things of that nature, but they don't really think about the lawsuit or the things that are trying to protect them or keep beach access open or whatever it is.

[00:31:56] Tyler: And Maybe, maybe for our listeners who, who [00:32:00] are uninitiated, um, you know, what, what, like, what do you, what is the mission of Surfrider exactly? Yeah. Like, explain that for our listeners who may not be familiar with Surfrider Foundation.

[00:32:13] chad: Sure. Um. So the mission statement is the protection and enjoyment of the world's ocean waves and beaches through a powerful activist network.

[00:32:21] chad: Yeah, so if you break that down Protection and enjoyment. Yeah, so we want to protect the places where we play.

[00:32:28] Tyler: We

[00:32:28] chad: want to enjoy the oceans We're about ocean recreations. We're really trying to get you know, anyone who goes to the beach whether it's to walk your dog go surfing Freedive, whatever you're doing windsurf if you love the coast and the oceans, you know You We want to get you engaged in the mission.

[00:32:44] chad: And we want those places. We also kind of think of ourselves as a recreation group. Um, uh, world's ocean waves and beaches is where the first is what we do, where we do it. So it's the, this is coastal zone, right? It's a place we love to play. Of course. Surf zone. Um, [00:33:00] impacted by offshore and by the land.

[00:33:02] chad: That's the intersection of all these things, including waves. Um, and, uh, through a powerful activist network, which is our chapter and club network, we have 200 chapters and clubs across the U S. Uh, pretty much all volunteer run. So you know, and again, the premise is love your place. Take care of it. Yeah. We will create the organizational tools, whether it's water testing or organizing the beach cleanup.

[00:33:28] chad: Uh, so we, we create this sort of framework to do community, you know, stewardship and activism and then we provide the science and the law, legal efforts and all that. So we're, we're basically creating like the, the structure to be an effective local steward. And then we try to scale that up from your beach.

[00:33:46] chad: Sometimes the issues are you're being affected by stuff beyond your boundaries. So we scale that up to the state level. We work on state issues and we scale it up to the national level. You know, like Trump tried to open up all coast offshore drilling. [00:34:00] It was a federal thing. Nobody wanted it. So we fought that successfully, you know, and then sometimes we go up to the international level.

[00:34:06] chad: Um, there's also work happening at the UN to try to, uh, there's a UN Plastics Treaty. Wow. Global treaty that, you know Uh, working on at the nation level to get nations to commit to plastic reduction. Um, so we're trying to take these, the issues, you stand at your beach, right? You're about to go surfing and you're standing there and you're like, All right, uh, is there sand under my feet or is the beach eroding?

[00:34:33] chad: Uh, is that water clean to swim in or am I going to get sick? You know, is there anything going to impact those waves? You kind of take that. Morning surf experience, and you're like, all right, how do I make sure all those elements, uh, Good healthy clean and then you know, can we

[00:34:52] Tyler: scale that

[00:34:53] chad: up?

[00:34:54] Tyler: I seem to remember back in like the early 90s.

[00:34:56] Tyler: There was a bit of a schism between [00:35:00] surfrider board members where there was the advocacy for surfers and Access and what they do Conflicted with the environmental aspect. What do you do with those things when you have like a What's in the surfer's interest versus what's in the environment's interest and how do you, how do you rectify that or how do you

[00:35:25] chad: square that?

[00:35:26] chad: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I don't think it's an or, it's an and, right? So it's not environment or surfing, it's environment and surfing. And there's very few issues where they're in conflict.

[00:35:40] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:35:41] chad: You know, because if you think about it, like, You want to surf in a clean, healthy, thriving ocean.

[00:35:47] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:35:47] chad: And so, those are all environmental issues, really. Yeah. At the end of the day, and, I mean, you know, arguably, you could think that some of the groin jetties would be an issue where, like, they're good for [00:36:00] surfing, maybe not good for the beach. So there's not a lot of cases where they're actually in conflict.

[00:36:06] Tyler: Well, I remember, like, what was it, with Pratt's Reef. Yes. You know, where that was, like, Kind of a schism there. Yeah, because it was like you won this landmark case. Yeah, I believe it was shell Chevron Chevron That's it Chevron and you were able to because they destroyed a wave. Yeah, basically by building Jetties and and all that sort of stuff and you sued you won and then you that money went to trying to build an artificial Reef to recreate that and that's where some of that kind of conflict I think came into place

[00:36:37] chad: and you know, it's funny that whole artificial surfing reef thing Continues to be a fantasy.

[00:36:43] chad: Yeah. None of them have worked. No. It's pretty hard. To make a good wave, unless you're gonna build it in a pool apparently. Yeah. You can do that

[00:36:50] Tyler: now.

[00:36:51] chad: Um, it's tough in the ocean.

[00:36:53] Tyler: Yeah, yeah. It's, well, it's interesting, like, that whole, I guess, that whole aspect of it, uh, for [00:37:00] Surfrider, uh, you've backed away from, I guess, like, trying to create waves out of waves that, that disappeared, or Yeah,

[00:37:08] chad: I mean, I I think we're much better off saving the waves we got, preventing the destruction of the ones we have.

[00:37:16] chad: Um, most of the, you know, there are a lot of waves that are built by human structures, right? Piers, uh

[00:37:23] Tyler: Rockaway, we just had all these new jetties put in, and it's like, godsend.

[00:37:28] chad: And, you know, but I call them sort of happy accidents. Like, none of them were built to create waves.

[00:37:34] Tyler: Wow. The ones in Rockway, technically on the DL here, saying on the podcast, the guy who designed the jetties was a surfer and, you know, had ulterior motives, but he won't go on the record, apparently.

[00:37:47] chad: Yeah, so, you know, but, uh, you know, and so, you know, going out there and altering the ocean for surf spots is definitely not like necessarily [00:38:00] our interest now. You know, there's a really interesting project taking place in, um, Oceanside right now where they have terrible erosion problems. Yeah. So they're trying to, like, rethink the coasts and, you know, climate change is going to readjust all of our coastlines.

[00:38:14] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:38:14] chad: And so I think this idea of protecting a natural, quote unquote, coastline, pretty quickly going away. There are places, a lot of places, where that's possible because we have an ocean. Up anything around them. Yeah, let nature do its thing. But in these other places where we're running up with sea level rise and our coastal development, we are gonna have to reimagine our coastlines.

[00:38:38] chad: So we're gonna be open minded about that. There's solutions out there that, uh, protect property and, um, Help manage erosion that are that also can produce surf.

[00:38:50] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:38:50] chad: Yeah, we're gonna take that case by case

[00:38:53] Tyler: How do you I mean, how do you deal with that then like with all the surfers who have? [00:39:00] coastal, you know housing and dealing with the rise of of the ocean, you know and like Cause so many of them don't want to move or get rid of their property or abandon their property.

[00:39:14] Tyler: I mean, Kelly Slater is a good example in the North Shore, his house. There was a road, there's been massive erosion on the North Shore and they tried like sandbags, illegally putting sandbags there that made a way, you know? And it's like, yeah, the weird conflict with surfers. I

[00:39:31] chad: was going to use that North Shore as an example.

[00:39:34] chad: Um You know, and this is happening all over the place. Yeah. I mean, there's houses literally washing into the ocean in Rodanthe Beach today. . I know. Did you see those videos yesterday at the houses collapsing into the water?

[00:39:46] Tyler: I've been seeing them a lot

[00:39:47] chad: lately. In general. Yeah. It's been happening. It's a mess.

[00:39:49] chad: It's a mess. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, sea levels rising, it's, that's gonna accelerate. Yeah. So, you know, we've had about eight inches of sea level rise. It's as an average over the last hundred years.

[00:39:59] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:39:59] chad: We're gonna [00:40:00] get three times that in the next 50 years. So it's coming.

[00:40:03] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:40:03] chad: Um, and. The coasts, if they're left to their own devices, just naturally shift.

[00:40:11] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:40:12] chad: Barrier islands move up and down the coast in geologic time. A good friend of mine who's a coastal geologist reminds me, he's like, you know, a bluff

[00:40:20] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:40:20] chad: is a geologic feature created by erosion.

[00:40:24] Tyler: Yeah. So,

[00:40:25] chad: it's there

[00:40:26] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:40:27] chad: because of the processes that we're now trying to stop. Yeah. True for every point break.

[00:40:32] chad: True for every river mouth. It's a cobble river mouth. Mm hmm is uh, that's an erosion process, right? Rocks are washing out and sand into the ocean creating these surf spots. So yeah, we're now saying hey this super dynamic The most dynamic landscape on the earth. We want it to be static so that we can have our house So we're like it we're in conflict with the system That said I get it Like if you're a front row [00:41:00] property owner and you spent a fortune.

[00:41:02] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:41:02] chad: you don't want to lose that Um, the problem is is if you you know, build a seawall Protect your property for some amount of time, but it's going to cost you the beach

[00:41:12] Tyler: That's

[00:41:12] chad: what we're seeing in the north shore So you got three choices. You put up a rock wall or some sort of armoring, protect the property, kill the beach and the waves.

[00:41:22] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:41:22] chad: Not good. No. Good for the property owner, maybe, but why are they living there? Yeah. You can't enjoy the beach. Uh, pump sand on the beach. So like these beach nourishment projects, which, you know, Cost a lot of money. Pull back the tide, but cost a fortune and you're doing it forever because the ocean's eating away at them or you move back.

[00:41:41] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:41:41] chad: Uh, and that's a tough one. Yeah. But we're going to have to do that at some point. So, on the North Shore, we, we pulled together, uh, what we call the North Shore Erosion Task Force, and got property owners, environmental community, surf [00:42:00] community, scientists, to work together to come up with a plan.

[00:42:04] chad: Because this is what we need to do, like, stopgap, if everyone's just fending for themselves, it's going to be a mess.

[00:42:09] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:42:10] chad: So we came up with a plan, and it wasn't like prescriptive, like, here's what we're going to do. Yeah. We're like, here are the issues we need to figure out.

[00:42:17] Tyler: Mm hmm.

[00:42:17] chad: And then we just got the state of Hawaii to commit a million dollars to Sea Grant, which is like a local coastal science agency, to start working on a plan.

[00:42:26] chad: And so that's, to me, the answer is, there is no easy answer. Yeah. The answer is to, like, get the community together. Understand what's happening and what's at risk. And then let's try to come up with a sensible plan that has the most benefit and the least cost. And there's going to be winners and losers in that, but that at least is like a fair way to figure it out.

[00:42:50] Tyler: God. Do you get Eddie Rothman on board? That seems like the linchpin right there. You need, uh, he is invited [00:43:00] to participate. I, I guess like, I mean, there's a bunch of things I want to talk to you about, but I kind of, we're in this direction. I want to talk about like this weird strain of surfers that don't believe in climate change and there's a lot out there and it's so weird.

[00:43:18] Tyler: Like, I, I hate to call out names, but like, I see someone like Peter King who exposes says that climate change is a hoax, but then works for a new earth, you know, and you're like, how do you swear this? How can you be? Pro environment, but not believe in climate change, and how could you not be concerned about the rise of sea level if you live on the ocean?

[00:43:40] Tyler: Like, even if you don't fully buy into it, you'd want to be aware and concerned about it, and it's hard to dismiss the evidence around us. Absolutely.

[00:43:50] chad: I mean, let's start by saying, like, this is unequivocally happening. Yeah. We can measure carbon in the atmosphere. Yeah. And, um, [00:44:00] that's just an objective study, and we can see it increasing.

[00:44:03] chad: It's the highest it's been in millions of years, long before humans were on Earth. Um, and sea levels are rising, and we can see that with tide gauges. Yeah. So the same thing we get up and read in the morning to figure out when we're gonna go surf. You know, if you look at the tide history at Scripps Pier for a hundred years, the curve is starting to bend upward.

[00:44:26] chad: So this is just real observation, right? This is not myth. Uh, now when you think about where it's headed

[00:44:36] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:44:36] chad: Now we're starting to speculate, like anything in the future, we're using models to predict, but you can look back over the last 50 years and the modelers, who are serious scientists, and there are thousands of them all across the globe, have been getting it right for decades.

[00:44:52] chad: But I read on Reddit that, from some random Yeah, I did my own research. [00:45:00] If you go back, if you also like, if you go back to the Exxon thing, you know, they've been sowing doubt on the issue of climate change forever. Since

[00:45:09] Tyler: the 70s. Right.

[00:45:11] chad: And they've known about that too. Yeah. You know, they assembled a bunch of scientists and they were like, uh, oh, this looks bad.

[00:45:18] chad: We can't talk about this. Let's cover this up. Yeah. Let's just hide. Pretend that's not happening. Um, so, you know, The science community, uh, you know, I, I am one, uh, they're hardworking people. You know, they were like, they say it's a money grab. Show me a climate scientist with a private plane. They don't exist.

[00:45:39] chad: You know, these, these are people who slaving away at universities and, uh, So the science community, you know, unequivocally understands the eight scientists that don't believe it all work for the oil and gas industry. Um, and it's observable.

[00:45:53] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:45:54] chad: I mean, the coastal erosion issues are terrible. Yeah. Uh, the, you know, Heat [00:46:00] waves are hotter.

[00:46:01] chad: The hurricane that's about to hit Florida is crazy. Is there, they're getting stronger and faster than ever before. Wildfires in California, you know, you talk firemen, pretty conservative bunch. Yeah. They're like, we've just, it's. We're fighting a different fire today than we were in the seventies. Just the intensity of them.

[00:46:21] chad: Um, so I, you know, at this point I'm like, there's no point in talking to deniers. Yeah. That's a distraction. Like we're focused on talking about how to solve the problem.

[00:46:32] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:46:33] chad: So, you know, those guys, oh,

[00:46:37] Tyler: I, I'm going to give you an idea right here. You need to make your surf rider shirts with all the graphs of like, tide rising and other infographics on there to make people aware.

[00:46:48] Tyler: Kind of just wearable infographics. Yes, you know

[00:46:51] chad: there's a, um, There's a great shirt from protect our winters. Yeah, you know this they're kind of like the snowboarding and skiing climate [00:47:00] group and it's like, you know a vast conspiracy to Ultimately clean up our air and water right because you know It's great.

[00:47:10] chad: What if we got it wrong? All we'll have done is cleaned up the air and cleaned up the water and provided in a bunch of new habitat and sounds sounds awful and potentially created a new economy potentially, you know, absolutely. I mean, right now, solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new energy. So Yeah, at this point the market forces are gonna take over.

[00:47:34] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:47:35] chad: If you're gonna buy, you know, uh, energy, you're gonna find the cheapest source. Yeah. If the cheapest source is, uh, wind and solar, it's so, it's, it's gonna happen. Ooh.

[00:47:45] Tyler: To me, uh, I just don't understand why even a lot of these companies don't make it so you're on like a re like a circular economy of reusable goods that when you're done, that company [00:48:00] picks it up, but they have you on subscription and you're less likely to deviate from that brand because you're on that subscription.

[00:48:07] Tyler: And you, if you got like. Weekly, monthly deliveries of Doritos in a jar instead or something. That was better. Yeah. Like and then back, back to the milkman. Yeah. You know, like, why not? Like you, you, it'd be better for business Think.

[00:48:21] chad: I think that's coming.

[00:48:23] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:48:23] chad: You know, you get the buyback on your iPhone.

[00:48:26] chad: Yeah. Like that. I think that's gonna be where a lot of this heads

[00:48:29] Tyler: I. I hope so. I hope so. Um. We got to talk about a couple other topics here quickly. Um, so you're also here to discuss New Jersey beach access and the beach badge issue. We all saw the video from this past summer of the surfer. getting beat down by the police because he didn't have his badge on him even though he did have a badge.

[00:48:53] Tyler: Yep. You know, and so, and as a someone who grew up in New York, most of our [00:49:00] beaches are paid to access or you have to live In the town to access those beaches, I grew up going to Robert Moses, which was a state beach, and they used to confiscate surfboards. You weren't allowed to even walk with a surfboard.

[00:49:15] Tyler: Yeah. You know, like I watch kids get, get arrested for carrying a surfboard. And so this issue has been around for a while. So what is, uh, surf riders plan and what are you guys trying to, how are you trying to remedy this?

[00:49:32] chad: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because if you, you look across the country, I grew up in Southern California surfing and Laguna Beach and the idea of Paying for the beach or being prohibited from going in the ocean no matter what the conditions are.

[00:49:47] chad: Yeah, it's like was unthinkable and You know and so and in New England like historically a lot of beaches close to surfing You know surf rider helped open surfing in the Rockaway. Yes

[00:49:58] Tyler: Absolutely. [00:50:00]

[00:50:00] chad: Yeah a bunch of beaches in New Jersey Asbury Park. Yeah, so it's just interesting that historically in New England The sort of oldest part of the country, there was all these like laws and, you know, Maine, we have a lawsuit right now in Maine to open up the, um, sort of title, you know, the other thing is where does the private property start and end on these coastal, usually it's in most states, the wet beaches is public and the dry beach can be private, but most of the time it's not.

[00:50:29] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:50:29] chad: Um, so, you know, a, we think these are public commons, beaches in the oceans, everyone should be able to go. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:35] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:50:37] chad: That said, we also understand, you know, we gotta pay for services, right? Lifeguards, beach nourishment, if that's part of it, trash cleanup, you know, management of these places. New Jersey and New York are somewhat unique, certainly New Jersey in this beach badge concept.

[00:50:55] chad: So, like, the idea that you need to pay to go on the beach is, you know, an [00:51:00]argument is we need that money for the services. Yeah. And we're not against them raising money for the services, but you know, and historically it's just been kind of the way it's always been in Jersey, right? So you just accept it.

[00:51:14] chad: A lot of places charge for parking. Yeah. It's either parking or parking. You can either pay at the lot or pay at the meter, which I, I totally accept that more so, right. And, or it's a hotel tax or a bed tax. Like, so my town raises money. It's tourist town. Uh, they charge the hotel that, you know, the guests.

[00:51:32] chad: And what you're doing there is you're really putting the cost out to the visitors. Exactly. Um, and you know, if you're a local in my town, you can get a pass for the parking meters. It's less expensive. Yeah. Um, and so, you know. I think this incident, A, the incident was unfortunate, total overreaction, right?

[00:51:50] chad: This kid, beach badge or not, didn't need to be, like, roughed up. Uh, it, and I think it drew attention to this concept. Because [00:52:00] the other thing about New Jersey, as you know, a million little towns.

[00:52:03] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:52:04] chad: Towns are like, like a block sometimes. Yeah. And so, you know, it's not uncommon to have, you know, Needed a new beach badge for each town.

[00:52:14] chad: People have like eight of these things.

[00:52:15] Tyler: It's crazy You know like asbury's right next to deal or whatever and it's like oh I just literally walked across this bridge and now I can't go onto the beach, you know

[00:52:25] chad: Yeah, and I don't know how this works, but I guess you know say you're surfing There's big swell and there's a lot of current and you start one place.

[00:52:32] chad: Yeah, and you're drift down the beach I mean in theory you could walk back up the wet beach, but if you wanted to go in

[00:52:38] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:52:38] chad: couldn't

[00:52:39] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:52:39] chad: You know, so it's crazy. So anyway, we're, you know, A, we want to make sure the system's fair. Mm hmm. Uh, I don't, you know, I'm not totally sure about this, but my guess is it's not very, sort of, there's a lot of, like, it's not equal.

[00:52:54] chad: So not everyone has, can afford those things or has access to the badges, so are we really letting everyone go to the beach? [00:53:00] Or is it really a form of, like, localism?

[00:53:02] Tyler: Well, it's a, it's a form of, of, uh, racism, to be honest. Yeah. You know, it's a way to keep certain people, uh, off the beaches, which, Like Long Beach, New York, it's almost like 20 to get on the beach per person.

[00:53:15] Tyler: If you are from a lower economic, uh, background, you're not going to go to the beach. You're not going to go there because you can't even afford that.

[00:53:23] chad: Right. It's crazy. It is crazy. And, uh, you know, so changing the beach badge system in New Jersey is, you know, something we're thinking about. We haven't really made a formal stance on that, but this incident kind of drove us to be like, Hey, every other state.

[00:53:41] chad: Many places in the country have figured out a better way to do this that's more equitable and fair and provides access, you know, my town has figured it out. And so I'm sure other towns can too. So, you know, kids shouldn't have gotten beat up. And, you know, we're taking a look at the [00:54:00] beach badge issue to see.

[00:54:02] chad: You know, it's kind of daunting to like reinvent the whole thing. Yeah. But I think New Jersey beaches should start thinking about it.

[00:54:09] Tyler: Well, you can start town by town, which is great because they are small and you can test actually. Um, it's in,

[00:54:16] chad: I heard LBI Long Beach Island, um, they have like reciprocity.

[00:54:21] chad: So if you have a beach badge in one town, yeah, you can use it in the other town. So even that is starting to create a system that's better than having to buy

[00:54:32] Tyler: It's crazy. You got to talk to Dr. Bill Rosenblatt about that. Yes. Former, you know, surf rider, founder of New Jersey and also, uh, former mayor of Lock Harbor.

[00:54:41] Tyler: That's right. You know, and former guest. Yeah. It's rail season. Yeah. A legend. Yeah. I, I feel like there's this great book I read, uh, and we had the author on, uh, it's called Free Beach, Free the Beaches and it was about Connecticut and its rights and access and how. This [00:55:00] supposedly liberal bastion of Connecticut and how the rich people just did not want to give access to the, the people from like Hartford and from city urban areas.

[00:55:10] Tyler: And it's just, to me, when I, and I look at like, you know, Long Island, the way it was developed with Robert Moses, the parkway system to get to the beaches were meant to basically only allow people who had cars on those parkways. You can't go on a. On a bus on there, you couldn't take large buses, so it prevented anyone who didn't have the means to go access the beach, which is systemic in our whole process.

[00:55:37] Tyler: Basically,

[00:55:38] chad: yeah, I mean, you know, Bruce's beach was a big issue in L. A. Right. This was like a black tourism community that was, uh, you know, kicked out. Um, and there were segregation historically at beaches where there were beaches where people of color weren't allowed. So there's a lot of historic, you know, there's redlining laws about sort of loan access for property.

[00:55:59] chad: [00:56:00] There's all kinds of systemic racist sort of policies in our past. Another one that's crazy is, you know, they got rid of public swimming pools.

[00:56:09] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:56:10] chad: Rather than integrate them, they closed them, which is terrible. And, uh, my, uh, My mom grew up in Queens. Oh, really? And, uh, when she went to Jamaica High School, a famously tough high school that's no longer open.

[00:56:24] chad: Yeah. Um, and when she was there, there was a law in New York that you had to know how to swim to graduate from high school. It was a requirement. I wish

[00:56:31] Tyler: they had that now. I know. This was

[00:56:32] chad: probably in the 50s. And, um, so she taught swimming. Wow. Uh, while in high school. It was like a side job. Uh, And that ensured that everybody who graduated from the high school could swim, you know, the Rockaways, there's a lot of drowning, so it's tragic.

[00:56:48] chad: And, um, you know, so this lack of access to the beach, lacks of access to swimming lessons were, like, all combined to sort of, you know, keep people of color out of the, off [00:57:00]the beach and off the ocean. And it shouldn't be that way. And there's a, you know, as you know, there's A lot of great stuff happening to change that here in the Rockways and elsewhere.

[00:57:08] chad: Laura Bay and groups and,

[00:57:10] Tyler: um, it's, it's slowly, slowly happening, you know, still the parts of Long Island that are just like Hamptons Montauk. I can't go, go out to Montauk in the summer and park, you know, like I'm not allowed to, you know, it's like all of that sort of stuff, which I find really interesting, especially if.

[00:57:31] Tyler: You know, they're going to use state funding to replenish their beaches, which is that was

[00:57:35] chad: an issue in New Jersey or private beaches. You know, that's, that's our money. Yeah. Federal money. It's tax money to so that that really makes it public. Yeah. You know, they should be public sort of by definition. You know, the sort of public access laws to the ocean and beaches goes back to Roman law.

[00:57:52] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:57:52] chad: You know, the public trust, they call it.

[00:57:55] Tyler: Well, that brings us to the topic of like the, um, you know, East end and [00:58:00]Montauk beach erosion that you guys are also, uh, working on and exploring. And that to me, it's like a great opportunity maybe to help open up the beaches a bit more too.

[00:58:09] chad: Yeah. And you know, what we're, what we're really focused on there, they had, I mean, it's happening everywhere, but they had really bad.

[00:58:17] chad: Uh, since last winter, you know, water washing up to the, you know, going through the homes and lost a lot of beach and subsequently that was nourished. It was kind of the end of the Literally the end, but like the end of the line, right? Or the beginning. For these projects, depending on which way you're coming.

[00:58:35] chad: Um, but they were the last place to get sand.

[00:58:38] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:58:39] chad: Um, and so they, you know, they nourish those beaches, so they're wide now, but that's not going to last. Yeah. Um, and, you know, we believe that you can use these nature based solutions to solve this problem. So if you go to like Hither Hills, kind of west of downtown Montauk.

[00:58:54] chad: Big, healthy dunes. Yeah. And, uh, those beaches are faring pretty well. The road is [00:59:00] somewhat set back from the coast. Yeah. And, um, you know, when they were, they've dug up the dunes, that front row of hotels is a problem in downtown Montauk. Um, and, uh, and so we're like, Hey, can we rethink sort of like how that if we, we can try to pump sand on those beaches forever.

[00:59:20] chad: Yeah. Um, that may or may not help. But can we, can we restore dunes? Can we sort of rethink how those hotels are configured? Is there a way to make this place a little bit more resilient to what's coming? Is

[00:59:34] Tyler: there anything we can grow underwater close to the shoreline that would help keep binding the sand?

[00:59:43] Tyler: You know,

[00:59:44] chad: I, I think. You know, it's interesting. Like on the on the West Coast, we have kelp beds. Um, and we've actually studied this in the past. They actually don't attenuate the wave energy. Yeah. Um, so they don't really change the wave energy. They just make

[00:59:58] Tyler: it glassier and

[00:59:59] chad: [01:00:00] smoother, which we like. Yeah.

[01:00:02] chad: But it's really about, it's really about these, like, these kind of land based ecosystems. It's wetlands, it's dunes, it's mangroves. That, that's the stuff that's gonna protect our communities. Part of it is we need to also create this, you know, if we were smart and could go backwards, we'd give the coast a little bit more room to breathe.

[01:00:20] chad: Yeah. Because it's just moving around, and um, so our focus on the east end is, you know, Try to get these nature based solutions in place. There's a Pretty well known surf spot in Ventura called C Street. Yep surfers point up the point from it River mouth We did a project there. There's a big bike path that fell in the water in a parking lot Yeah, and it's Matt.

[01:00:44] chad: It was a mess and It took a long time. A legendary surf rider activist named Paul Jenkin left, led the work and still does. And they moved the whole, it's county fairgrounds land, they moved the whole parking lot back. Uh, [01:01:00] put a bunch of cobble in the ground to kind of like armor it, but in a way that's natural.

[01:01:04] chad: And then covered it with sand and planted dunes. And it survived these last two giant winter storms, winters of storms we had. And if you look at it today, it's, it's still there. Beautiful.

[01:01:16] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:01:16] chad: And that is a nature based solution to Coastal Rouge and now moving the parking lot back. That's the hard part.

[01:01:23] chad: Yeah. If it's somebody's house. Uh, or there's infrastructure, sewer line, roads, trickier to solve, but.

[01:01:31] Tyler: You know what? Most of the wealthy people now own the coastal property, so I don't feel as bad. If they have to move back, they got the money. They've got a house elsewhere.

[01:01:41] chad: I mean, and they, you know.

[01:01:43] Tyler: That sounds fucked up, I'm sorry.

[01:01:45] Tyler: Well, you know, hey,

[01:01:46] chad: you know. They bought that house because, presumably, they love the ocean and the beach. And, uh, so, in some ways, they should be invested in keeping those [01:02:00] places, I might be naive and optimistic, but in keeping those places nice. In a perfect world, we'd work with them. I get that they're, have a lot to lose.

[01:02:08] chad: But, so does the public, and they don't want to, You know, why own that property if you can't go to the beach? So,

[01:02:16] Tyler: all right. I, man, we're so much. I want to get to, but like not enough time, but I wanted to talk briefly about, uh, windmills and surf riders stance on them because it's become a very controversial topic amongst surfers, which is funny and interesting.

[01:02:33] Tyler: And I'm like, you know, I've done an episode on this and it's like confusing because you're like. I don't think the windmills are that bad compared to like putting a liquid natural gas pipeline off the coast and having it as a, you know, terminal or, you know, or some of these other things, you know, so I'm curious, like, Surfrider's stance on that.

[01:02:54] chad: Yeah, so, you know, I think we need to start by saying, hey, [01:03:00] it's not windmills or no windmills. Yeah. It's, do we do offshore wind? Or do we burn fossil fuels? Yeah. Like we need energy. And, um, so it's not, you know, it's, it's part of the, part of the considerate, I believe part of the consideration has to be, what are the alternatives, right?

[01:03:16] chad: And so climate change is impacting our oceans, you know, 101 degree water in Florida, stronger storms and sea level rise in the future trajectory of sea level rise, how much we're going to get.

[01:03:30] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:03:30] chad: Is it going to be a foot and a half or six feet? Is going to depend on how quickly we get off fossil fuels.

[01:03:37] chad: And so, if you care about that surf spot or that beach, you should be motivated to help us get off fossil fuels, to save them. So, how do we do that, right? We need alternative energy. And so, wind. is one of those, and offshore wind is an opportunity. It's a particularly, like, [01:04:00]wind rich environment to produce energy.

[01:04:03] chad: So it's a good place to produce energy. So, hey, look, do we want to industrialize the ocean? No. Ideally, we wouldn't. But if we want to avert the worst impacts of climate change, we gotta do something. So, we actually worked, there was plans off of, uh, New England that were started, the conversation started a decade ago.

[01:04:26] chad: Yeah. And they were like, hey, it was called ocean planning, where, uh, where are the shipping lanes, where are the fishermen? We added to that process by saying, where's all the recreation. So they made a plan to try to find the best places to put wind that had enough wind that were like, reduce the conflict with all those other things.

[01:04:48] chad: So I've been talking about this for a long time. Um, you know, now they're building windmills and we at Surfrider, you know, are taking it kind of case by case. We're like, [01:05:00]Hey, so our broad position is we need this. Yeah. Yeah. We need to get off fossil fuels and then it comes down to like, is the project a good project?

[01:05:10] chad: Yeah, are they Considering the impacts are they ready to mitigate the damages that they have? So, um, you know, it's it's easy to say no. Yeah to everything It's hard to say yes, cause you're taking a risk. Um, and so that's kind of our, so we're sort of in a like, yes, but we want to see what happens.

[01:05:33] Tyler: Well, it feels like there should be good oversight on it.

[01:05:36] Tyler: You shouldn't just let. Wild west, you know, people just build really shitty windmills either, right? Yeah. No,

[01:05:43] chad: that's right. And I mean, it's expensive Yeah, um, you know that wind mill broke off antucket like that sucks.

[01:05:51] Tyler: Yeah,

[01:05:51] chad: um, however Uh the oil spill on the gulf coast way worse the oil spill in [01:06:00]huntington beach in 2020 The costco abuse an oil spill in san francisco bay two in santa barbara You You know, and so the, you know, the consequences of oil and gas are also causing impact.

[01:06:16] chad: Yeah. You know, we're fighting to keep that stuff off the east coast too. Yeah. Uh, which is great. So like, you know, there, will there be some impact? Yes.

[01:06:26] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:06:27] chad: Um, can we try to minimize that impact? Yes. You know, and then we're trying to take a science based approach, uh, Yeah. Yeah. There's been all these whale deaths.

[01:06:35] chad: Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. Um, and, you know, the anti wind folks are very quickly, without any evidence, uh, linking the two.

[01:06:45] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:06:46] chad: You know, um, when a lot of, when the marine mammals die, they actually, like NOAA, does necropsies and studies the, you know, the cause of the death, and most of them are ship strikes.

[01:06:58] chad: Yeah. It takes a fair amount of [01:07:00] time to do that. And it's hard. Yeah. It's really hard to do. There's You know, there, they call them these mass mortality events, which happen, there's these clusters of deaths, sometimes we don't totally understand why, ocean's still a mystery, uh, the mass mortality event started long before any of the wind stuff started.

[01:07:18] chad: Yeah, 2017 I think it even started. There's very little evidence, if any, that wind is causing the deaths we're seeing. That said, we should be careful about that, but whales are suffering the consequences of climate change. Already.

[01:07:34] Tyler: Yeah. So, you know, well, there is a lot of plastic. They're finding them in, they're in the necropsies.

[01:07:40] Tyler: And the other thing that I think a lot of people don't seem to realize is like, particularly around here, shipping has increased like double, triple since they've actually widened the base in, in New York into Newark and everything. Like they've widened the shipping. So there's larger ships coming [01:08:00] into those ports.

[01:08:02] Tyler: Uh, especially like since COVID, uh, we've seen shipping spread out more because it was concentrated mainly in like Long Beach, California, a huge portion of it, and that was creating a backlog. So now they've spread it out and lo and behold, what are we seeing? More ships striking. Yep,

[01:08:21] chad: no, that's right. I mean, and we see it off, uh, off the California coast too.

[01:08:26] chad: And there it's not issue we're working on, but there are other organizations working to try to minimize that where the ships go, you know, uh, how fast they go and there's other efforts to like provide warnings. Yeah.

[01:08:40] Tyler: Well, um, Dr. Chad Nelson, it's been such an honor having you here. I honestly could talk for a few more hours with you and really mine this and hopefully we could have you back.

[01:08:52] Tyler: I'd love to do it. Maybe next year if you come again for climate week. Yeah. I would really love to discuss and explore more of these issues. Um, there's so [01:09:00] much more just, Changing the surfer's consciousness as a whole, I think, is really, uh, important, and, and SurfRider has a role to play in that, so, uh, I would love to explore those more in the future with you.

[01:09:13] Tyler: That would be great. But for the time being, here's your chance to give the shameless plug for SurfRider and yourself.

[01:09:19] chad: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I mean, you know, What I ask is for surfers to join Surfrider as a member. Yeah. You know, there's, we estimate there's, we have about 50, 000 members. Um, there's power in numbers.

[01:09:33] chad: So the more members we have, the more influence we can have at the local, state, and federal level. So it gives us power. You know, there's 3 million surfers, best guess, right? Yeah. Somewhere around that in the U. S. If we could just get 1 in 10. Yeah. That'd be 300, 000 surfers we would be a force to be reckoned with.

[01:09:51] chad: Yeah. Uh, it costs five bucks a year. It's a cup of coffee. That's so nothing. Uh, yeah.

[01:09:57] Tyler: It's

[01:09:57] chad: so nothing. So that's my plea [01:10:00] is join. We will put that five bucks to good use in your community. Uh, and uh, you'll help make us a stronger organization to protect those ocean waves and beaches that we all love.

[01:10:12] Tyler: And where can they go find Surfrider?

[01:10:15] Tyler: Surfrider. org. Pretty easy. And for New York surfers?

[01:10:19] chad: Yeah, we have, uh, New York City chapter, so they're local, they're doing stuff here in the Rockaways all the time. We've got Long Beach, uh, Central Long Island, trying to build that back. And then we're out in Eastern Long Island, you know, uh, East Hampton, Montauk.

[01:10:34] Tyler: And, uh, where can listeners find you, yourself? Yeah, where can they send, like, nasty DMs and stuff? Yeah,

[01:10:42] chad: uh, send it to Surfrider on socials. They can find me at Chad E. Nelson on, uh, on social channels. Awesome.

[01:10:52] Tyler: Well I really appreciate you coming on and, and making time and I am, uh, wishing you best of luck [01:11:00] this week.

[01:11:00] Tyler: Hopefully you can make some new connections and networks and make some progress. And, uh, I wish you the best of luck in this case against Exxon. Yeah. Uh, we're all really, uh, keeping a close eye on that. So thank you for sharing all of that info today.

[01:11:16] chad: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun to sit in the podcast booth here in Manhattan and, and talk surfing in the environment.

[01:11:22] chad: So thanks for having me.

[01:11:23] Tyler: My pleasure. And, uh, of course I gave it, got to give a shout out to my main man, Joe here, our engineer who keeps us sounding good and got to thank, uh, the new stand studio here at Rockefeller center in the heart of Manhattan. And of course, don't forget to like, and subscribe, uh, at swell season surf radio on Instagram, or go to our website, swell season, surf.

[01:11:42] Tyler: com. And, uh, we'll check you all down the line soon. You [01:12:00] [01:13:00][01:14:00] [01:15:00]